Not catastrophic numbers, to be sure, but, coupled with the vocal response to my article, it capped a very bad week for the company’s senior management. Analysts began talking about a private equity takeover.

Later that day, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn published his own long blog post, which he titled “My thoughts on Best Buy’s recent media coverage.” Though Dunn’s post doesn’t reference Forbes directly, most of the subsequent press coverage assumes it was written in response to my original article. Dunn’s reply also closely mirrors the internal script that was sent to me on Wednesday.

Dunn, who has been CEO since 2009, began by acknowledging two points of my criticism which he thinks “got it right”: the cancellation of Christmas orders and the slow implementation of the company’s “customer-centric” strategy. He wrote:

The cancellation of some internet orders just before Christmas was our fault, and it’s not representative of how we EVER want to treat our customers. I’ll spare you the technical explanation of how and why it happened, but we know we did not deliver a good experience and we’re truly sorry. We’ve worked to make amends with customers whose holidays were made less happy because of our mistake, and we’re working diligently to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

That’s a much better apology than the one I quoted in my original article. (“Due to overwhelming demand of hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some of our customers’ online orders.”) Dunn admits that it was the company’s fault, not a “situation” it “encountered,” and doesn’t pretend that the “November and December time period" is something less crucial than the holiday season.

On the other hand, it’s easy to apologize weeks after the fact, after 30,000 customers have already been given the non-apology from managers and customer service reps.

More to the point, my criticism wasn’t so much the failure of Best Buy to manage its inventory or to identify the back order problem in time for customers to make other arrangements so much as the effort to distance itself from the problem through obtuse language that made the company look as if it, not the customers, was the victim. Dunn now says the cancellation was the company’s fault, which gets to my actual criticism. Since I wasn’t one of the affected customers, I can’t say whether the belated apology will be acceptable to those whose efforts at “redemption” of their orders were “affected.”

(The initial failure to take responsibility, by the way, turns out to be worse than I thought. A company insider sent me what appears to be the official script given to customer service personnel sometime after Dec. 14 in response to the cancellations. “Recently,” according to the instructions, “some media outlets have been bringing attention to Best Buy’s recent cancelled customer backorders. Please ensure that you are utilizing the following messaging when speaking with a concerned customer.” After reading the message (“Due to overwhelming…”), CSRs were instructed to “Verbalize empathy to our customers regarding the cancellation of their backorder.”)

Dunn also thinks I got it right with regard to the company’s lack of integrated operations and I.T. systems (the “technical details” his reply “spares” us):

Another area where we have received fair criticism is the overall speed of the transformation of our business model – something we are working hard to address. We’ve accelerated changes to key elements of our model already (the significant expansion in the number of products available on Bestbuy.com and the launch of our online Marketplace are two recent examples), but we need to move even faster, particularly in creating a more seamless experience between our stores, web sites, call centers and services teams. We recognize people can and do shop from anywhere, and they expect thoughtful, helpful interactions from us every step of the way. We continue to invest in a number of areas – from employee training, to critical system enhancements – to ensure our customers always receive the kind of experience they deserve and expect from us, wherever and whenever they choose. But, simply put, that work needs to happen faster – and we’re taking significant steps to accelerate the pace.

As I put it in my original article, quoting from “Killer App”: to survive the transformation to Internet commerce, an existing business needs to ensure continuity for the customer, not for itself. Dunn apparently agrees, though it still isn't clear what has taken the company over a decade to get it right.